Archive for October, 2015
Author: 
October 31st, 2015
Newly released documents reveal a wide variety of duties for the classified Air Force project, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
Credit: NRO
A treasure-trove of historical data – pictures, film and numerous documents – has been released by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) regarding the secretive Cold War U.S. Air Force project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
The first of three MOL astronaut groups.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
The NRO release of MOL information was timed for an event held on October 22 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
Former MOL crew members took part in the event under the title: “The Dorian Files Revealed: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory Crew Members’ Secret Mission in Space.”
Credit: NRO
The audio from the museum’s October 22 event has been posted at:
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Portals/7/av/mol_panel.mp3?ver=2015-10-28-121530-427
Note: Special thanks to Rob Bardua in the public affairs division at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force for providing the link.
The MOL program ran from December 1963 until its cancellation in June 1969. According to the National Reconnaissance Office, the MOL program spent $1.56 billion during the program’s life.
As reported earlier, you can dig into thousands of pages of declassified documents on MOL, along with pictures and other resources, by going to:
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/MOL.html
Posted in 
New Horizons en route to Pluto and beyond!
Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
After a voyage that lasted more than nine years, NASA’s New Horizons probe and its flight through the Pluto system last July conjures up feelings of the little spacecraft that could.
Launched back in 2006, New Horizons has “staying power.” The piano-sized probe weighed at liftoff a modest 1,054 pounds (478 kilograms), energized by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator.
New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO., left, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Director Ralph Semmel, center, and New Horizons Co-Investigator Will Grundy Lowell Observatory hold a print of an U.S. stamp with their suggested update since the New Horizons spacecraft has explored Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
New Horizons is slipping through space in great shape, prepared to chalk up even more history in an extended mission mode. If approved by NASA, the craft could eye a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) in January 2019. At that moment the spacecraft will be at a distance roughly a billion miles beyond Pluto. KBOs are small icy bodies that reside in the enormous region of space that begins a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit.
Pluto…and beyond! NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John Grunsfeld, left, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO, second from left, New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), second from right, and New Horizons Project Manager Glen Fountain of APL.
Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
The spacecraft remains healthy and continues to spit out data stored on its digital recorders from its fly of Pluto.
I recently sat down with Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from SwRI in Boulder, Colorado, to discuss the historic mission and what lies ahead.
Go to this new Space.com story at:
On Pluto Time: Q&A with New Horizons Leader Alan Stern
by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist
Date: 27 October 2015 Time: 08:00 AM ET
http://m.space.com/30934-pluto-new-horizons-alan-stern-interview.html
The New Horizons team spells out a token of their appreciation for Pluto encounter supporters at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Credit: APL
Newly released documents reveal a wide variety of duties for the classified Air Force project, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
Credit: NRO
A mother lode of information – documents, pictures and a film – has been released by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The material focuses on the classified Cold War U.S. Air Force project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
Among duties of MOL crews included satellite reconnaissance activities called Project Dorian, but other tasks were considered.
Credit: NRO
According to the NRO, MOL was a 1960s Air Force program “with the ostensible mission to place military personnel in orbit to conduct scientific experiments to determine the ‘military usefulness’ of placing man into space and the techniques and procedures for doing so if the need ever arose.”
“The Air Force controlled development of the satellite, which was consistent with MOL’s unclassified mission, while the NRO ran development of the covert reconnaissance mission of the program, including the camera system and other subsystems,” according to the NRO.
Credit: NRO
At the start of the program in December 1963 until its cancellation in June 1969 the MOL program spent $1.56 billion, but never launched a manned vehicle into space.
MOL-assigned duties included underwater trial-runs of astronaut mobility.
Credit: NRO
The NRO release of MOL information was timed for an event held on October 22 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
Former MOL crew members took part in the event under the title: “The Dorian Files Revealed: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory Crew Members’ Secret Mission in Space.”
For an informative account of the Wright-Patterson event, go to:
To begin your digging into 20,681 pages of released documents on MOL, along with pictures and other resources, go to:
Curiosity’s Mastcam Right image from Sol 1141, taken on October 22, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA’s Curiosity rover is just entering Sol 1143 on Mars.
Recent rover research in the last few days involved both daytime and nighttime activities.
According to Ken Herkenhoff of the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, unsieved parts of the recently collected Greenhorn drill sample are being dumped onto nearby ground.
Using the rover’s Mastcam and Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), pictures of the resulting pile were taken.
Also slated, using the rover’s Mastcam and Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) to observe the target “Maywood” to better characterize the variations in silica content near the rover.
After dusk, the script had MAHLI using its LEDs to take pictures of the walls and bottom of the drill hole. MAHLI will also take close-up images of the drill tailings, Herkenhoff added.
Curiosity ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager shows laser strikes down the hole on Sol 1141, October 22, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Laser blasting
Recently, images of the drill hole were used to have Curiosity’s ChemCam fire the instrument’s laser down the hole. Doing so allows scientists to analyze the elemental composition of vaporized materials. The technique should be useful in measuring variations in chemistry among individual sand grains and in detecting thin veins.
The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating flow of water toward a basin that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed. Note that the colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret the rocks. This “white balancing” to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ancient depression
Curiosity has been busy inspecting the strata at the base of Mount Sharp.
That strata dips towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating the ancient depression that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed, according to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory website dedicated to Curiosity activities.
Back on the road
In a late Friday update, the weekend plan calls for Curiosity to depart the current exploration site.
Lauren Edgar, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center, explains: “After several weeks at ‘Big Sky’ and ‘Greenhorn’, it feels good to be getting back on the road…and by road I mean completely uncharted territory on another planet!”
Credit: UFODATA
If you believe that the curtain is drawn and tightly closed on the fact that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) are real and in the here and now, take note.
There’s a new science team on the scene, just launched to acquire data on UFOs that may prove useful to science.
The group is called “UFODATA” standing for UFO Detection And TrAcking – a moniker that is based on building a network of automated surveillance stations with high-tech sensors for gathering scientific data on UFO phenomena.
The aim is to move toward a scientific solution to the UFO problem by implementing an effort to gather systematic instrumented observations.
Anomalous aerial phenomena
UFODATA stations would measure anything unusual that comes within their range. While detecting anomalous aerial phenomena is top priority, the stations are sure to record already known but rare natural events, such as ball lightning.
Credit: UFODATA
The main project goal is to directly record physical data – photos, videos, magnetometer readings, electromagnetic radiation, etc. – about unexplained aerial phenomena “in a more comprehensive manner than has ever been done before,” the website adds.
“Whether or not our observations suggest an extra-terrestrial presence,” the website explains, “collecting such data would show (a) that UFO phenomena can be studied in a rigorous and systematic fashion, and (b) thereby hopefully break down the ‘taboo’ that has long stymied basic scientific research in this area.”
Initial goal
Regarding the UFODATA stations, the expense of developing a prototype station — including not just the equipment, camera, and sensors — but also software, construction and testing is in the range of several tens of thousands of dollars. Subsequent stations should be less-costly once the design and construction details are in place.
Sensor-fed computer assessments are key elements of a station network to study the UFO phenomenon.
Credit: UFODATA
UFODATA’s initial goal is to raise enough money to design and construct one prototype station that would undergo testing for up to one year. The group then expects to fully deploy the first station and begin construction of as many additional stations as funding permits. Ideally, the stations would eventually be deployed on a global basis.
Given an assessment of the instrumentation and software necessities for the system, UFODATA intends to launch a crowdfunding campaign to secure needed funds to pursue building and installing a network of stations.
Silent partners
The intellectual sparkplugs behind UFODATA are over a dozen volunteers, a confab of scientists, engineers, and UFO researchers. “We are also joined by several ‘silent partners,’ all scientists and engineers at academic institutions who are prepared to help, but because of the cultural stigma attached to UFOs have chosen to keep their involvement private,” explains the UFODATA website.
Published 2010 by Crown Archetype
A UFODATA board member is Leslie Kean. She is an investigative reporter and author of the New York Times best-selling book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record and is also co-founder of the Coalition for Freedom of Information.
“I’m a journalist and not a ‘ufologist’. I remain agnostic about the nature and origin of UFOs,” Kean told Inside Outer Space. “The popular debate tends to go back and forth between two extremes: conspiracy theorists convinced that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, and debunkers equally convinced that UFOs don’t even exist. Neither position is the rational one.”
Kean said because so little science has been done on UFOs “we remain ignorant about what UFOs actually are.”
UFODATA aims to change that, Kean said. “We now have the opportunity to elevate UFO investigations so that they become part of the larger scientific search for extraterrestrial life and will eventually be recognized as such by the world community.”
Resources
For detailed information on UFODATA and its plans, including a call for volunteers to assist in their work, go to:
Also, go to this paper that details the project for a network of automatic stations for UFO monitoring:
http://www.ufodata.net/resources/UFOAC_MT_Project_REVISED(6).pdf
Oxia Planum has been recommended as the primary candidate for the landing site of the ExoMars 2018 mission.
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin & NASA MGS MOLA Science Team
Oxia Planum has been recommended as the primary candidate for the landing site of the European Space Agency/Roscosmos ExoMars 2018 mission.
ExoMars 2018, comprising a rover and surface platform, is the second of two missions making up the ExoMars program, a joint effort between ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos. Launch is planned for May 2018, with touchdown on the Red Planet in January 2019.
ESA’s ExoMars Rover
Credit: ESA
Meanwhile, the Trace Gas Orbiter and the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing demonstrator module will be launched in March 2016, arriving at Mars around this time next year.
Schiaparelli will land in Meridiani Planum. The orbiter will study the atmosphere and act as a relay for the second mission.
Biosignature search
For the ExoMars 2018 landing site, a preliminary analysis shows that Oxia Planum “appears to satisfy the strict engineering constraints while also offering some very interesting opportunities to study, in situ, places where biosignatures might best be preserved,” explains Jorge Vago, ESA’s project scientist.
Oxia Planum contains one of the largest exposures of rocks on Mars that are around 3.9 billion years old and clay-rich, indicating that water once played a role at that selected site.
Location of four candidate landing sites for Europe’s ExoMars 2018 mission. Scientists and engineers recently met to select Oxia Planum as the top candidate site for the rover.
Credit: ESA/CartoDB
Drill down
The ExoMars rover will search for evidence of Martian life, past or present, in an area with ancient rocks where liquid water was once abundant.
A drill on the rover is being designed to extract samples from up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) below the surface. Given that the surface of Mars is considered hostile to living organism, the search underground has more of a chance of finding preserved evidence, according to ESA.
The drill’s main function is to penetrate the soil, acquire a core sample, extract it and deliver it to the inlet port of the Rover Payload Module. In that module the sample will be distributed, processed and analyzed by the Analytical Laboratory Drawer.
Credit: The White House/Office of Digital Strategy
Today, the White House is marking “Back to the Future Day” with a series of conversations with innovators across the country.
As part of the Day, the White House requests your participation by asking you to take a visionary leap into the future by asking:
“You Tell Us: What Does 2045 Look Like?”
No roads required?
The White House site says “Get excited, and remember: Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but adds: “Just kidding. We definitely do. And by the way, Congress should fund them.”
Back to the Future Day centers on the date to which Marty McFly in the hit movie traveled into the “future” in Back to the Future Part II.
What does the space future hold?
Credit: TransAstra
“We’ve come a long way in the 30 years that have passed since the original Back to the Future came out. Now, we’re going to talk about where we’re going in the next 30,” notes Lindsay Holst, Director of Digital Content for the Office of Digital Strategy in the White House.
Resources
To offer your views and to monitor the Back to the Future Day activities, go to:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/10/20/back-to-the-future-day
Also, check out this visionary view of asteroid mining and processing, courtesy of TransAstra at:
Credit: NASA/NOAA/USAF
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) – sitting out at the L1 Lagrange point directly between Earth and the Sun – is producing images of the full, sunlit side of the Earth every day.
Now a special website offers once a day postings of at least a dozen new color images of Earth acquired from 12 to 36 hours earlier by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC).
EPIC’s images of Earth allow scientists to study daily variations over the entire globe in such features as vegetation, ozone, aerosols, and cloud height and reflectivity.
EPIC was built by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center, in Palo Alto, California.
Credit: NOAA/NASA/USAF
DSCOVR is a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force.
Images are posted through a website hosted by the Atmospheric Science Data Center at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. All images are in the public domain.
For daily images from EPIC, visit this NASA Goddard Space Flight Center site at:
Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) was used on October 19, 2015, Sol 1138 to produce this photo.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Operators of NASA’s Curiosity rover have scored another successful drill hole on Mars.
Curiosity Navcam Left B image taken on Sol 1138, October 19, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Over the weekend Curiosity drilled another hole on Mars at the “Greenhorn” target,” explains Lauren Edgar, a research geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. “Everything went smoothly and we have another beautiful sample to analyze!”
Now on tap is transferring the sample to the Chemistry & Mineralogy X-Ray Diffraction (CheMin) instrument, leading to analysis of the new specimen of Mars.
Image taken by ChemCam: Remote Micro-Imager on Sol 1139, October 20, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL
Observations by Curiosity of the drill hole and surrounding rocks are underway.
Edgar adds that the Chemistry & Camera (ChemCam) is slated to fire its laser and analyze the elemental composition of vaporized materials from targets “Gypsy,” “Tumbleweed,” and “Wrangle” to assess the variability of silica associated with these fracture zones.
Curiosity NavCam image showing drilling operation on Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Also scheduled is transferring the “Greenhorn” drill sample to be sieved and dropped off to CheMin for an overnight analysis.
“It will be interesting to see,” Edgar reports, “how this sample compares to the “Big Sky” target!”
Manned Orbiting Laboratoy (MOL), an evolution of the earlier “Blue Gemini” program, which was conceived to be an all-Air Force parallel of NASA’s Gemini efforts.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
Several space pioneers are slated to share their experiences later this month regarding the Cold War Air Force program: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL).
In the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force initiated a human spaceflight program to carry out experiments in space in a laboratory orbiting the Earth for an extended period of time. MOL was to use USAF-modified NASA Gemini spacecraft to put two crewmen in a space station.
MOL provided a platform for a highly secret program to gain Cold War intelligence on the Soviet Union and other adversaries.
Four former MOL crew members — 17 astronauts were chosen for the program — are scheduled to take part in a presentation “The Dorian Files Revealed: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory Crew Members’ Secret Mission in Space.” A National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Keyhole -10 camera was codenamed “Dorian.”
The free event is set for October 22 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
The first of three MOL astronaut groups.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
MOL men
The MOL astronauts set to share their insights are:
■ Karol Bobko – Following the MOL program, Bobko went to NASA where he served as a pilot on one space shuttle mission and as a commander on two others. He retired from the Air Force as a colonel and then continued his career in the private sector.
■ Albert Crews – He was selected as an astronaut in the first group for the MOL program. He transferred to NASA Flight Crew Directorate at the Johnson Space Center in June 1969 when the MOL program was cancelled. He remained a pilot for NASA until his retirement, flying such aircraft as the Super Guppy outsize cargo transport, the WB-57F atmospheric research aircraft and the OV-095 SAIL space shuttle simulator.
■ Bob Crippen – He too was assigned to NASA after the MOL cancellation, and he played several critical roles in NASA’s manned space program, including serving as the pilot of the first space shuttle mission and the commander of three other missions. He eventually rose to oversee the shuttle program. After retirement as a captain in the U.S. Navy, Crippen continued working in space programs with Lockheed.
■ Richard Truly – He was assigned to NASA after the cancellation of the MOL program. There he played critical roles in several manned space programs, including serving as a space shuttle commander. Truly was tapped to lead the return to space after the Challenger explosion. He went on to lead NASA as its administrator from 1989-1992. After retiring from government service, he has continued to have an active career in space programs and other endeavors. He retired as a Navy vice admiral.
Declassified elements of MOL
According to a museum press statement, during the presentation, the National Reconnaissance Office will also reveal information about recently declassified elements of the MOL program.
Inside look at the MOL.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
In an update to the program, it has been announced that two former MOL astronauts — James Abrahamson and Lachlan MacLeay — are unable to participate in the event.
Following the cancellation of the MOL program in 1969, Abrahamson continued his U.S. Air Force service. He was eventually assigned to NASA where he oversaw shuttle operations and was selected as the first director of the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense program in President Reagan’s administration. He retired from the USAF as a lieutenant general and continued his career in the private sector.
After MOL, MacLeay returned to the USAF as a pilot, including a stint as a combat commander during the Vietnam War era. He retired as a colonel and went on to work for Hughes on missile systems.
Resources
Special thanks to Marcia Smith’s SpacePolicyOnline News for flagging this important space history event. Her website notes the museum has indicated the event will not be available via webcast. However, audio will be posted on its website a week or two later and DVDs will eventually be available for loan.
For more information regarding this October 22 event, go to:
Also, go to this informative NOVA documentary website, “Astrospies” that aired via PBS in 2008 at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/astrospies/profiles.html
As well as:
